Putting A Pastor To Death For Being Christian?

An Iranian pastor who has refused to renounce his Christian faith faces execution as early as Wednesday after his sentence was upheld by an Iranian court.

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who maintains he has never been a Muslim as an adult, has Islamic ancestry and therefore must recant his faith in Jesus Christ, the 11th branch of Iran’s Gilan Provincial Court ruled. Iran’s Supreme Court had ordered the trial court to determine whether Nadarkhani had been a Muslim prior to converting to Christianity.

…Nadarkhani, a pastor in the 400-member Church of Iran, has been held in that country’s Gilan Province since October 2009, after he protested to local education authorities that his son was forced to read from the Koran at school. His wife, Fatemeh Pasandideh, was also arrested in June 2010 in an apparent attempt to pressure him to renounce his faith. She was released in October 2010, according to Amnesty International.

Muhammad was just a man — and not even a good man. Allah? He’s a false idol who doesn’t exist. I honestly think every Muslim in the world should convert to Christianity because our God, our God is good, and yours is not.

But, I also think people should be allowed to have the freedom to believe what they want. It’s wrong to try to force people to convert at gunpoint. It’s wrong to force people to stay in your religion. Not only should every Christian speak out against that sort of behavior, every decent person and certainly, every moderate Muslim, should speak out against it wherever it occurs and whatever religion engages in it.